Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/523

495 CONFLICTING RIGHTS OF TELEPHONE LINES. 495 and causes the annunciators in the exchange to fall when no call had been made, and does other mischief. 2. Induction. This is a more obscure and difficult phenomenon, but it appears that when the wires of a telephone are near the trolley wire and parallel to it the strong current of the trolley, varying in its strength as the cars are started or stopped, or from other causes, induces a current on the telephone wires which varies as the trolley current does, and thus interferes with the telephone current and causes confusing noises in the telephone. As soon as the electric railway was introduced into the streets, it became evident that the effect of these two kinds of inter- ference was wholly to destroy the usefulness of the telephone. Customers would not continue to use telephones when their ears were greeted with a pandemonium of strange noises, amid which the words of their interlocutor were unintelligible or very con- fused. There were three more or less efficient modes of remedying the trouble : — 1. The use of the double trolley system on the railway, that is, having two trolley wires over the track and two trolley poles on every car, so that the current would pass from one wire and trolley into the car motor, and then return to the other wire, and so back to the generator. By this system, the railway current is not dis- charged into the ground at all. 2. The use of an all-metallic circuit for the telephone lines, so that there should be no chance for the railway current to get at the telephone lines. 3. The McCluer device, so called, which is in effect a single return wire for several telephone lines. This device is cheaper than a metallic circuit for every line, and may be so arranged as to obviate to a great degree both kinds of disturbance. The question before the companies was, therefore, which com- pany must make the change. Had the telephone company the right to compel the electric railway to adopt the double trolley system on penalty of ceasing operations? Had the electric rail- way company the right to compel the telephone company to adopt the all-metallic circuit, or McCluer device, on the same penalty ? Almost immediately upon the installation of the earliest electric railways followed the first suit brought by the telephone com- panies to restrain the electric railways from using the highways. In January, 1889, a case was decided on this point in the Court of